What significance do we assign to objects? How do we infuse them with emotions, and how do they influence our self-image? When items become mere consumer goods, they lose their narrative depth and consequently their ability to reflect our inner selves.
Alice Peach counters this loss with an artistic language that perceives objects not as empty shells but as carriers of identity, emotions, and transcendence. Her work operates at the interface between our inner and outer worlds, functioning as translators of experiences that bridge the past and present, as well as surface and depth.

Even in children‘s drawings, airplanes and boats often appear as simple symbols representing air and water. Romanticized as toys, these objects find their way into children’s rooms, until we later realize that they can also be polluters, loud, functional, and at times, tools of war. Alice Peach is intrigued by the evolution of such objects over time, whether they are industrial or organic. She is interested in their forms, aspects, and the layered meanings assigned to them by society, time, and personal perspective.

Peach works with everyday materials like ice cream sticks, cardboard, wood scraps, prayer beads, children’s bead necklaces, and pens. Through her art, she revitalizes these materials and explores their hidden potential. Each object is examined with curiosity and broken down into fragments—whether through the words we use to describe it, personal associations, memories, or elevated symbols. These various perspectives do not hold a fixed order or hierarchy; instead, they create a dynamic network of relationships and individual points that complement and combine to unveil the complexity of the object.

This principle is embodied in Peach‘s characteristic confetti-like fragments. Generic snippets are formed from sketches, templates, operating instructions, or non-fiction books (as is the case with the airplanes). In this process, they lose their original structure and context, ultimately becoming individual elements in the artist’s work. These elements interact and occasionally form letters and words, culminating in a finished piece that can be interpreted as a sentence. Peach views this process not as a collage, but as reconstruction. She illustrates the cycle of construction and decay while referencing the tension between an object’s tangible form and its abstract dimensions. Through her art, she explores the boundaries between consumer objects, identity, and the materiality of everyday life. She reveals that even the most mundane items harbor layers of meaning that often go unnoticed at first glance.

This condensation of components and the further development of the object also reflects a material cycle, as the artist repurposes existing objects in her work. Her creations testify to an almost childlike enthusiasm for form, and despite the complexity inherent in her approach, she maintains a sense of lively lightness.

Verena Osthoff